Anointed of the Heretic Naval Raiders
“Lo, drink up, for mother doth follow,
A bottomless bottle for bottomless sorrows
Her fangs are steel, her eyes are hollow,
So drink up tonight ’case you can’t tomorrow.
“Lo, drink up, for mother don’t sleep,
As pointless to run as it is to weep
Her skin is brass, her claws cut deep,
So pray the Lord your soul to keep.
“Lo, drink up, for mother is near,
The smell of grog hides the smell of fear
Her swim makes no wave, no footstep to hear
She’ll drag you to hell ‘fore you know she’s here.
“Lo, drink up, for mother has come,
So savour what shall be your last taste of rum.”
– A folk shanty about the Mother of Dread, Anointed of the Drowning of Innocence
The transformations each Anointed undergoes on their pilgrimage into the Inferno are as surreal and varied as the horrors of Hell itself: flesh that perpetually burns and blisters, or is riddled with frostbite, or coruscates with an abundance of eerily luminescent veins. More varied still are changes brought about by the unspeakable deeds and damning pacts made in a desperate bid to survive beyond the Hellgate. Most refuse to speak of their journey upon their return to their Legion, killing any foolish enough to ask with all the frenzy of a newly uncaged beast. But the one thing all Anointed share is the undeniable power granted them by their dreadful trials. For some, this strength comes with a desire for independence, causing them to cast off their past allegiances and seek out the savage freedom of the Heretic Naval Fleets.
It is known that the Heretic Fleets boast a far looser structure than their shore-bound Legions do, sometimes with hierarchies that vary from vessel to vessel. Yet it is inevitable that the Anointed Heretic Raiders are found in the upper echelons of a ship’s pecking order, most commonly serving as first mates or bosuns to the Heretic Captains. There they enjoy the authority of lording their intimidating cruelty over their fellow crew, enforcing the word of their Captain if only for the opportunity to brutally punish the slightest act which could be construed as mutiny. The only limit an Anointed respects when distributing said punishment is that of their own imagination, which has been vastly expanded during their infernal pilgrimage.
The call to battle against YHWH’s lapdogs is often a relief to the rest of the Heretic crew, for it means that the insensate sadism of the enforcers will be directed elsewhere, for a time at least.
Whether it be a shock-and-awe boarding action or a midnight raid on a coastal settlement, the Anointed become the bastion of muscle and patinated brass upon which the faithful break. They bear the heaviest arms and armour used by the Naval Raiders, from forearm-mounted machine guns to blades heavy enough to split a man in twain. The reinforced plating of their diving suits make them a living bulwark, walking through enemy fire as if it were naught but sea spray, inured to any pain by the constant supply of stygian gasses circulating throughout their breathing apparatus. The many eye-holes of their visors grant them vision not only of the physical world, but a form of hallucinogenic geist-sight cultivated by the fumes, allowing them to perceive stimuli normally imperceptible to mortal senses, such as pheromone trails, the faint electricity emitted by thought, and even the movement of divine power through the soul. This ability to hunt even when denied the privilege of light or sound makes an Anointed Heretic Raider a relentless and unavoidable predator for those unlucky enough to attract their attention in a skirmish.
Despite their beyond-human physicality and propensity towards violence, the souls of the Anointed Heretic Raiders are still human, and as such remain subject to the intoxicating power of sin. None has taken greater advantage of this than Leviathan itself, the great beast of the oceans cast down and cruelly bound by the Throned Tyrant. As a mighty beast of Envy, and once Prince of Invidia, Leviathan knows all too well that it is those that aim to evidence their strength and superiority at any given moment that are the easiest to manipulate.
It can sense the weakness in the spirits of many Anointed, the fear that despite their brutish strength, they will never shake the vulnerability they felt when they walked the smouldering ash of the underworld. The abyssal serpent needs only to bring that fearful part of the Anointed’s soul to their attention for but a moment, a fleeting instant of awareness that others may be stronger, in order to have them willing to petition them for power. Over time, Leviathan’s grip has tightened around enough Anointed hearts to form an entire fleet of worshippers known as the Leviathan Shoal.
Adopting the shark as their totem, the Leviathan Shoal endlessly prunes the weakest from their number so that only the very strongest survive, earning such a reputation that Anointed from other fleets abscond to prove their worthiness to join the crew.
In Leviathan’s name, the slow and the injured are sacrificed and cannibalised in frantic rituals, both in devotion to their Abyssal Prince and in an obsessive display of their difference from the vanquished. In battle, they favour melee weapons to further demonstrate their brutality, often eschewing heavier blades in favour of the cursed knives used for their rites, already tiny tools further dwarfed by their hulking physique. Indeed, so frequent is their butchery that great swarms of sharks, eels and other predatory fish follow the ships of the Leviathan Shoal in hungry anticipation. When the slaughter is done, the feasting begins on friend and foe alike, the survivors growing fat on the ruin they cause and tossing their remnants to the ever-present sharks that roil in their crimson wake. A common tradition for whichever Anointed has fought their way to the captaincy is to test the strength of their crew by calling the Challenge of the Chosen Son. There, each of the Anointed doffs their armour and weapons and dives into the following shoal. Whoever slays the largest shark barehanded earns the title of Chosen Son, along with the honour of affixing its corpse to their diving suit as a trophy. A great irony persists that those in the Leviathan Shoal who are so fixated with being seen as the Chosen of their pack are deeply submissive to established hierarchies of power, and it is this seed of envy that the Heretic Captains cultivate in order to attain the true blessings on offer from Leviathan.